For Your Consideration

Ada, or Ardor, Cafe Rio and Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’?

I love videogames, casual swearing and electronic music. I love Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? a YouTube series that combines all three in hilarious, periodic game reviews. Most of the time, the videos make little to no sense. A majority of the time, they have nothing to do with the game they’re reviewing. But it’s funny watching Anthony and Ashly Burch, a brother-and-sister combo, play games, throw controllers, reenact scenes and partake in general tomfoolery. Sometimes they dress up. Sometimes Ash, who is a little bit quirky, wraps herself in an American flag and slaps people with a four-foot-long dildo bat.

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BOOK

Too many people know Vladimir Nabokov for Lolita, a tale about lies, pedophiles, and child molestation. Not enough people know Nabokov for his bajillions of other works… that incidentally also frequently involve lies, pedophiles, and child molestation. But that’s not the point. The point is that both Vladimir Nabokov and his 1969 novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle kick ass. There’s symbolism rolled up in a burrito of allegory, science fiction, and social commentary. There are hidden nuggets of literary allusion. There’s some deep smart-people stuff involving the nature of the universe, the interrelatedness of human existence in the dimensions of time and space, and incest.

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FOOD

I’m not usually one for chain restaurants because I’m a buy-local snob, but I stumbled across culinary gold at Cafe Rio in Coeur d’Alene. This veritable ambrosia of the gods consists of an enchilada-style burrito with rice, beans and sweet pork, cooked in a rich tomatillo sauce and smothered in cheese. When this bad boy comes out of the oven, it’s slathered in even more sauce, as if the salsa cup of the heavens overflowed in a fountain of flavor that can only be described as a wellspring of happiness and joy. The result is a burrito about the size of a kitten, swimming in a pool of tangy salsa, unicorn tears and sweet dreams.